


Breath Before Lightning

by Smaragdina



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:10:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Her eyes squeeze shut and her head turns to the side and she bites the pad of her thumb as if the pain can center her, can steal the name from her lips, but it can’t, it can’t." The night and Jessamine's side of the bed are both shamefully cold. PWP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breath Before Lightning

The sound of the rain lashing against their bedchamber windows is deafening. The first storm of the season is tearing the sea to white and breaking on the rooftops of the tower, and Jessamine is not surprised that she cannot sleep. Disappointed, perhaps, but not surprised. She has always been restless at night, prone to burning candles low and tossing and turning in bed, and ascending properly to the throne has never been known to cure a body of anything.

Her husband, at least, sleeps like the dead. And does not snore. A double blessing.

He is a slight man, made large by titles, and the shape of him under the blankets is barely enough to cast a shadow on her side of the bed. She turns her head to consider – but no, he is asleep, she could probably not wake him if she shook him by the shoulders. He is just simply there.

He is always just simply _there._

She flops back against the pillows and closes her eyes.

It is not that their marriage is a battle, or dispassionate, or any of the things she feared as a young girl. She is an Empress and he is an upjumped aristocrat’s son, and he has little fire behind his eyes but can certainly play the part well enough. They have landed (after long discussions and not enough privacy) at a place of comfortable respect. It is something that is _almost_ unwary enough to be called friendship. She cannot say that she _minds_. It is only that when he kisses her, the desire she can taste is angled first for her title and her Kaldwin name and second for her body – and there is little, if any, that is left for Jessamine herself.

It is, by all accounts, an agreeable marriage.

There are times when she wishes it were disagreeable enough to warrant separate sleeping chambers; but not now, not so soon, not while her belly remains distressingly flat. And not over a complaint as light as sleeping habits. It is not as though they particularly clash in the bedroom. It is not even that what they do to each other, what he does to her, is particularly unsatisfying.

It is just –

Well.

She is using an awful lot of qualifiers and rationalizations in her thoughts, isn’t she, and she bites her lip and rolls over, twisting sheets around herself horribly in an effort to find some sort of comfort. She kicks them off, yanks them back on a moment later when the air is cold on bare skin, curls up into a ball underneath them and stares narrow-eyed at the man who is still and lifeless and _there_ on half of her bed.

This is _resentment._

This is unwarranted.

This is _ridiculous_.

And she would like to _sleep_ , by the Void, and it’s not as though she’s stressed and it’s not as if the rain is too loud, she has always enjoyed the sound of rain. It is not as if she desires the man sleeping next to her. Taking up half of the bed and (much less than) half of the rule that is rightfully hers. She does not _desire_ him, not now, not when he’s boring as a corpse while the rain howls outside her window. He’d taken her just the night before and he’d been so very horribly considerate, hadn’t he, it had been rather _pleasant_ even if his kisses tasted of duty –

She’s using qualifiers again.

_Fuck._

Jessamine knifes her way onto her back, stiff, eyes wide, watching the lightning throw reflections of rain on windowpane upon the ceiling. She breathes, slow. Her hands uncurl and curl again, clutched at the top of the blankets. She breathes and breathes and breathes. It does nothing to calm the tightness prickling over her skin.

Quietly, inaudible over the rain, she swears a soft string of whaler curses that an Empress should very much _not_ know. Her husband, still, does not twitch. And so, quietly, she unclaws a hand from the blankets and slides it down beneath them to trail over her body.

(It is only to help herself sleep, she tells herself. Only that. Her marriage is, after all, so agreeable).

She lets her mind wander as slowly as her hand, fingers tracing soft over her breasts and hips and belly. There are fantasies she’s used before, of course; and she lingers over the thought of men an Empress should never meet, calluses on their hands and curses on their tongues, desire as hot and dangerous sharp as the burn of liquor in her throat – no. Not tonight. The storm is violence enough for her now and the air is cold and what she needs –

(She flicks through the faces of the aristocracy in her mind, Parliament, the men with smiles and mirrors and lies in their eyes, and she does not find it).

What she needs is comfort, long familiarity, the heat of fire blazed but shuttered, violence held in check. Someone who will bracket her face between his hands as he kisses her as if she is a thing to be savored. He could press her deep down into the mattress and hold her there and his hands could bruise, could _hurt_ , but he would never, _ever_ , and it’s not because she’s breakable and it’s not because of careful maddening agreements of _marriage_ between them and –

She half-wishes she were still dressed. Even if it meant peeling off her own clothes in the dark. A man like this would undress her so carefully. He would be the one to do it, she’s sure, not she. And there would be reverence in his touch and _want_ , he’d trace the shape of her like her own fingers are tracing now and tilt her head back to kiss her –

Oh.

Her fingers find one of her nipples and roll it between them, and she sighs in the dark.

When he kissed her it would taste nothing of duty. She can imagine the thrill of it already, running down her spine, the _secret_ curling heat in her belly. It would be something wicked and urgent and probably far too quick and he’d bite at her lip, a little, and she’d whine (and that is not a noise befitting of an Empress, that is _not_ a noise she just made). He’d kiss her hard as he undid her jacket by feel, clumsy, and she’d press herself against him with hands fisting in the blue-black and gold lapels of his coat –

Jessamine gives a little shudder, her brows drawn tight together and her eyes squeezed shut. Because that thought, that _thought_ –

It is not as though it’s never occurred before.

It is just that he’s so watchful, quiet, eyes dark and always there and she can’t help watching back, can she?

The hand that’s been playing at her breasts trails down to stroke the insides of her thighs. Her legs turn outward and open by themselves and she keeps her motions careful, _careful_ , trying to not shift too much at once as if she might wake the man beside her. The rain thunders on. So loud.

If he came to her on a night like this no one would be able to hear them –

Her fingertips ease between her legs, and _oh_.

He’d be careful, too. Not because she’s fragile but because she is _precious_. She’s read enough of that reverence in the dip of his head, the darkness of his eyes, the press of his lips to the back of her hand – he _believes_ her to be Empress, not anything like her puppet advisors or lying aristocracy. He’d treat her as such. She’d want him to just take her, _she’d_ be the one who was hurried for once, she’d beg for it, her voice would probably even crack – he’d want to make sure it did, make sure she was ready and he’d kiss and touch and learn his way down her body and drive her utterly mad by the time he reached between her legs. And he always watches and he _always_ knows what she wants, so he’d –

He’d circle her clit just like so and –

Jessamine gives another shudder, chills and fire prickling up her body.

That’s what it’d be like. Just that. She’d cling to him. Hands on his shoulders.

(She wonders if he has scars on his shoulders, or anywhere else, if she could ask him the story of each and try to make his voice falter as he told it).

There are scars on his fingers, though. She’s seen those. Tiny white scars like bursts of stars on his knuckles, almost invisible. Swordplay. Calluses. She wonders if she’d be able to feel them as he slid his fingers inside her.

One, at first.

She adds two, because her own fingers are small and narrow and because there’s a shiver that wracks her body at the thought, leaves her gasping on the bed. The hand that isn’t worked inside her presses to her mouth. She can’t make any noise. Even with the storm beating against the windowpanes. She can’t, she _can’t_.

They’d be found out. They’d be caught. They could never make any noise.

She holds her hand clumsy and tight over her mouth and imagines that it’s his. Yes. The weight of him draped over her and keeping her down and his hand over her mouth, whispering in her ear that _they have to be quiet._ There’s a catch in his voice that wants to be a moan and he seals his mouth against her throat to silence it, hint of teeth but only a hint because he’d never –

Her protector –

 _Forget your title,_ she’d gasp out. Somehow. _Stop protecting for once. Corvo –_

There is a _snap_ that goes through her starting at her hips and Jessamine whines, fingers dragging inside of her. She tries his name against her hand. Silent.

Not enough.

Her eyes squeeze shut and her head turns to the side and she bites the pad of her thumb as if the pain can center her, can steal the name from her lips, but it can’t, it _can’t_. And her voice is so, so quiet. Shaking. Because they’ll be caught. Of course they’ll be caught. The thought is an electrical storm over her skin. “Corvo –”

Her hips jerk against her hand and she needs – she needs –

“Corvo,” she gasps, wretched around her hand, his hand, “I – please –”

_Shh._

Third finger inside her. Rough and dragging. Thumb at her clit. And there’s no point in him covering her mouth, now, not with the way she’s gasping, not with the way she can hear it over the storm outside. She’d tried so hard to be quiet and now he was going to take her so the whole tower could hear her –

She wouldn’t care, they wouldn’t care, she doesn’t _care –_

His cock. Filling her. Nails in his shoulders. Her heels in the small of his back. His mouth at her throat or his kisses falling over her face like rain or off-kilter and heated on her lips. Teeth against her collarbone, that little pain, not quite enough to leave a mark but only just –

_Oh._

And she moans, a small little sound, catches her lower lip between her teeth as her free hand slides down to cradle her own throat. He could – he could hold her there, even. Safe. She knows there’s violence in those hands but she’d be _safe_ and it’d be just that, just that pressure. Tiny bright edge of danger of his hand so careful on her throat and the pressure of his body over and on and inside her.

He’d try to take her slow but that’s not what either of them wants so –

( _Want._ They both do. She’s sure of it.)

She imagines his smile in the dark, toss of hair from his eyes as he leans down low to ask. To make sure.

_Like this?_

Like this. Inside her. Need. She twists on the bed. Skin slick with sweat. She is safe and made bright and burning by his hands, candleflame brought to a blaze, all desire, something like worship, and she’s watched him and she knows it’s not her body or her name that he wants but _her_ , wants to peel the mask from her skin and map out every inch of her underneath it, he’d fuck her full and _open_ , ah, yes, he’d -

“A-ah –”

(And he is always watching, he knows her, he _knows_ , so well, he knows how to make her human, he knows how to make her writhe and sigh and scream and –)

 _“Fuck-!”_ And Jessamine _arches_ , high, back bowed, his name falling like a gasping litany on her lips. _Corvo, Corvo, Corvo_. No less holy for being unvoiced, and the climax that rushes over her is _white_ and shuddering as the crackle of lightning in the sky outside.

She lies there for a long time. Panting. Her hair is stuck to her face with sweat and her skin is wracked with chills and with the ghosts of her own hands and the hands that are not there. With the ghosts of dark hair, dark blue-black coat, dark and watchful eyes in the shadows. Following her. Danger and devotion and desire. Always watching.

She shivers under the covers, and it has nothing to do with cold.

The rain thunders on. The man on the other side of _her_ bed is there, nothing more. He has not heard. No one as heard. But her Lord Protector watches, always, and so…

She swallows, hard, the lightning from the season’s first storm only just beginning to fade on her skin. She listens to the rain outside. Listens to the thunder hold its breath.

And so.

Hers is an agreeable marriage, Jessamine thinks, as her breathing calms and quiets. Couched in such cool and passionless language. She has no cause for complaint, and so of course no one will mind if she requests they move from one bedchamber to two. She has reason. Different sleeping habits.

Her husband, mild man that he is, will surely understand.


End file.
